We decided to break our tradition of staying within our confined borders of publishing American poets and photographers. We have received countless submissions from international poets over the past few years and intead of rejecting them all, I informed them that eventually we would do an international issue. Well here it is...

This issue features an interviews with Poet Laureate of San Francisco, translator of 9 international authors, and author of The Arcanes, Jack Hirschman and Australian poet dominating the small press, Glenn Cooper.

ExcerptEXCERPT FROM THE INTERVIEW WITH JACK HIRSCHMAN:
In the interview we published in issue 20, you said, “to translate, for me, is also to be nourished by another’s poetry in an intimate way outside oneself.” Is this to say that in order to make writing universal, it is necessary to expand senses and absorb the feelings expressed by foreign writers with completely different backgrounds and upbringings?

Of course. Not simply universal, but passionate. Translations mean many things, but one of the central nourishments is that they can lead one to passionate cores that (admitted or not) one’s own country and conditions actually constrain one from expressing. The paradox is this: for all the “liberty” of language we have—slang, obscenities, open forms—really passionate poems in our language are few and far between. Why? Because in this country the idea of a People is a lie. We’re all rather atomized, alone, we’ve bought the lie of the “individual” and as a result have little relationship with the “inner community” from which real passions really arise. The only way to overcome the monstrosity of being simply self-expressing ambitions to celebrity is to learn what class-consciousness is. One’s poetry will deepen from such knowledge. Poets like Neruda, Eluard, Dalton, Pasolini all understood that naturally. They are masters of passions and have much to teach anyone writing poetry.

AN EXCERPT FROM THE GLENN COOPER INTERVIEW:
I see that you have been published in many of the top Small Press American literary journals (Rattle, Anthills, Remark, Chiron Review, etc.) Does Australia have a strong, active small press movement? Or do you prefer to submit to American literary journals?

The Australian small press movement is non-existent, as far as I can tell. Don’t get me wrong, there are poetry magazines, but they are university based and, almost by definition, are crap. I have submitted to these magazines, but I have never so much as received a reply, let alone an acceptance. So I don’t do that anymore. I just don’t bother. I’ve been published in maybe a half dozen countries, but not in my own. Kind of funny when you think about it. So I submit exclusively to overseas magazines out of necessity.